Disturbing Trends

The recent disturbing trend is one of higher rates of mosquitos.  Yes, I have a mosquito net.  But more to the point, I have two cats who think it is just something to climb. The mosquitos are slow though, so if I see it first and can actually keep it in view, I can probably kill it. The second disturbing trend is that they are stealth and silent. I sat on the couch in broad daylight, wide awake and wondered what was biting me – in four different places.

So I am surprised the three hour nap I just took, without any bug spray, or net, wasn’t as lethal as it could have been. I guess it helps that my niece, Lucia, isn’t here leaving the windows open without shutting the screens anymore. I took her to Gaborone this morning so she could catch the bus back to Kanye after a three day visit and I could do some shopping and follow up on receipts for this grant we are closing up this week.

Lucia, who is 13, came back with me after Christmas in Kanye to spend a few days and meet my teenage friends. All and all, it went well. They got along fine and all acted like silly teenaged girls, which of course they are.  I made apple fritters for them twice (I am convinced they are healthier because, unlike the fat cakes, fritters have on an average of just under ¼ of an apple in each one.  Who am I kidding?)

 I was unable to access my computer at all when they were here  and either using it to play games or watch movies. Lucia watched Twilight and the Twilight Saga two or three times. I finally had to cut her off. I found the last book of the series at the PC office Wednesday when I went to see the doctor and brought it back.  Here, I said, you can read the next book. Nah, she wants the movie.  I said, “Well, I don’t know when it will be out here.” Then I started reading the book and she started watching the original all over again.  In Gabs today I saw the first part of Breaking Dawn is in the movie theater.  So much for her ever reading the book.

The girls walked all the way to work with me Wednesday to access the internet so they could look up the test results for the people in Form 3, which is roughly equivalent I think to 10^th grade. But don’t quote me on this. I have never seen so few A’s and so many D grades in my life. And the one guy who got an overall “A” got a “D” in PE, so where does that leave us?  I asked the girls, “Is it because they are stupid, aren’t studying, or are the teacher’s not teaching?” They are too naïve to get the concept of bad teachers being a potential cause of bad or non-learning, so they felt the kids were just lazy and not studying. This was also the grade level that one afternoon decided to beat up some of the younger kids, so maybe they are just trouble all the way around.

I asked the girls what the kids thought they would do if they didn’t do well enough to graduate and go on to college. The girls just shrugged their shoulders and said, “nothing, or crime” like it was a foregone conclusion for some of the kids. They know them better than I do, given that many are cousins or neighbors or both, but it is too bad that these kids aren’t being instilled more with the importance of education as the only thing between them and poverty.  Problem is that even when people DO get a good education, they don’t always find work, so education isn’t ALWAYS going to keep poverty away.  And how many 15-18 year olds think that their life as it is, all fun and games, can’t stay that way once they are an adult with no money?

At some point during Lucia’s visit, and as a result of their ongoing infatuation with my computer, I told them, “if you ever want a computer like this, you need to do well in school so you can go to college and get a job where you can afford a nice computer like this.  Otherwise, the only way you will get one is if you sleep with a really disgusting old man who has promised to give you one.” Oops. Maybe that was too blunt. They looked disgusting up in the dictionary and while the word there didn’t fit perfectly, they got the point.  Hope it sticks.

This week I have only been to the office briefly Wednesday. We had Monday and Tuesday off, and the only thing I need to do this week is deliver two checks to vendors so we get quotations and invoices with a December date on them, and re-write the narrative report after the EU representative came last week and edited my report for me. So you can see how hanging with teenagers eating fritters and watching Twilight over and over won hands down for activities.

I stopped by the local water utilities office, where we had gone over two months ago, to ask them what the heck was taking them so bleep bleepidy bleep long?!!!! 

They said they had measured it already. Fine. “Did you TELL the office in Ramotswa what the measurement was so that they could produce a bill so that when we kept sending people there to get one they could actually give them one?”  We will go re-measure today and then call them.  OMG. I smiled, thanked them and left.  So tomorrow at 8 am we are off to see the wizard and see if anyone has figured out how to take the information, put it on a piece of paper with invoice written on top, and hand it to us before the end of the year.

I know it can be done because lots and lots and lots of people have given me quotations and invoices just like I ask. It is just for some reason we are having problem with the basic necessity of water.  Well, and the other less basic necessity, but nicety, of electrical current being hooked to the Otse support’s group’s office building. It took three trips by three different sets of people (well, I went as my own singular self, un-set and unsettled) before I got them to take the check from me and give me a receipt showing they have our money. That was to pay for the electrical hook up. Maybe after the country is out of December, otherwise known as the “Month No One Who Doesn’t Have to Work Does” we will get us some power.

Add to all this another fact: I have absolutely no clue what to write in the narrative report. I mean, I have written my share of grant reports and reports of all kinds. I have written both fiction and non-fictionalized accounts of things that did happen, might have happened, could have happened, and no way in he—ever should have happened. Still, I am stumped. I wrote our report, turned it in and the representative came and edited it. Not only edited my “draft” final report, but also my “final” interim report which I thought was, well, “final.”  Apparently nothing is final until someone sings.  God knows it won’t be me – I’m down to 144 pounds now and with THIS voice, it just isn’t advisable.  I think the problem is I write in 100% American, and they want something more understandable, something more English.

So instead of doing that, I kept my house full of crazy teenagers all week, then came home today from Gabs and took that 3 hour power nap.  It is now close to 9 p.m. and no narrative report will be written by me today.  Maybe tomorrow, after our nice trip to the Land of Water and Utilities I will have been given the brain and courage to go on.  I still have the heart.

P.S. Nope. The trip to the Land of W and U was too crazy to describe.  I came back to the office at 1:30 to find everyone gone baby gone. I organized some of the financial paperwork, checked my email, and sent you all this update.  I am going home for either another 3 hour nap, some Twilight or to write a narrative report. Not sure which at this point.

Posh Wedding

I went to a pretty decent wedding this past weekend, probably one of the best so far.  Okay, and it wasn’t just because the color theme was purple and I arrived in my nice long purple dress, with matching purple Bagillini bag and newly acquired folding purple umbrella. Although that did turn some heads and caused a few women to ask me if I had known the theme was purple…they were just jealous, being there in their sorry blues and greens and such.

Seriously.  I almost didn’t make it, but I had promised my friend Florence, chair of the Taung disability support group and older sister to the groom, the Kgosi of Taung himself. I still don’t feel so hot (actually also way too hot) and the idea of trekking there seemed so arduous. Well, the idea didn’t but the doing of it did. No. I take that back. Even THINKING about going hurt in some way.

I had originally been invited to go Friday night to help with the cooking, but that had been quickly nixed by yours truly. I would have certainly lost any remaining German cookies if I had had to partake in a goat and cow slaughter.  This meant arrived relatively fresh for the wedding at 1300 hours, instead of being on my feet for what would have felt like 1,300 hours. 

I had luck with a hitch. A fellow originally from Bangladesh, living in Lobatse and operating a car repair shop. I had just missed the bus – not being able to walk my usual brisk pace I could just watch it go and eat its dust. We had a pleasant conversation about why he hasn’t been back to his country for 20 plus years, the fact that there are about 3000 people from Bangladesh (“Bangladeshis”?) living in Botswana and that they almost all know each other, and that he is Muslim.  I asked if he was harassed for that here, and he said no. He said that 65% of the Batswana when asked what their religion is say “God.”  I don’t know if that is true or not, but I like it.  I think perhaps if we really want peace on earth we should try to get that number up to closer to 90 or 99% and encourage the fine people here to expand their efforts outside of Botswana.

He dropped me at the stop where I would try my luck with the combi into Taung. As I was getting out of the car, he was already reaching for his cigarettes, which he had been kind enough not to smoke during our ride. I don’t think our conversation drove him to it. It looked like they were there for an already existing habit and not simply as an antidote for irritating passengers. I caught the combi and it left immediately without waiting to jam the last possible body into it. And poof, magic, I was early.

I waited for Tom at the bus stop and we walked to Florence’s mom’s house together, where all the festivities would be taking place in a large decorated tent nearby.  Tom lives in Ramotswa, just down the road from Taung.  With the vagaries of travel in Botswana without one’s own set of wheels, it took me only 30 minutes to get there being about 20 miles away, while it took him a bit longer being about 3 miles away.

We were greeted like royalty, but at least this time it didn’t feel so bizarre because I actually knew some of the people there, having met most of Florence’s quite large family at one point or another. Tom knew people too, because this was practically Ramotswa and he attends the Roman Catholic church there and this was a catholic wedding.  So why was this such a great wedding, as they go, besides my clothing coup?

Exhibit A:  We are welcomed and brought into the mother’s sitting room where we can get out of the crowd of commoners and sit with the area’s Catholic Bishop and one of his nuns. Okay, they aren’t really HIS nuns (are they??), but she was, well, hanging out with him so, I just kind of assumed…

Exhibit B: When it comes time to sit at the tables in the tent, we are again directed to sit with the Bishop and his now TWO nuns, along with the District Council Secretary, the Director of the Land Board for the region (the folks that give, and then sometimes taketh away, land to individuals and others), some other important guy, a fellow who might have been a semi-retired Kgosi from another village and eventually the Kgosi from Ramotswa herself. She trumped the Bishop, so to speak, as the protocol of these things go but they both got to give long speeches. I think we ousted the Kgosi from my own village and the priest from Tom’s church because they both arrived later than we all did. They had to sit at a slightly less front table.

Exhibit C: This was the first wedding I have been to where they put a bottle of wine on each table, along with lots of water, juice, and soda. Okay, the fine nun sitting next to me ended up quietly cleaning all the glasses on our table because they were filthy (it would not do for her Bishop to drink out of that, nor me, thank you!) but we had plenty of libation.  When the bride and groom took their ceremonial glasses of champagne, the remainder of the bottle was also placed on our table.  Tom, the semi-retired Kgosi and I drank most of it, and our bottle of red wine ended up at the table next to ours, but only after they very politely asked ME if they could have it.  Later Tom said he had hoped to nick it for later. Shoot, I had totally forgotten my PC poverty vows, sitting among all this pomp. Of COURSE we were supposed to nick it. That must have been why I brought my big purple bag that can carry anything.  I blame the champagne and my head cold for my slowness.

Exhibit D: there were the usual plates being served with the food, but the bride and groom’s table, our table, and the wedding party members, all were able to serve ourselves from a special secret table just behind us.  This meant we got lots of what we liked and none of what we didn’t. It had totally different things on it than what everyone else was getting. Although everyone got seswaa and it was GOOOD seswaa – no bones suddenly in your mouth for you to quickly and subtly decide if you can swallow or should better extract  before you choke in front of the Kgosi and Bishop both. Of course, invariably, we all wanted to have what was on the plates of the commoners’. And so it was brought to us, just like that. Later, dessert arrived as well– cake, ice cream, fruit salad or all of the above. It was a pity I couldn’t eat most of what was offered – as a safety precaution for my potentially long trip back and the vagaries of my digestive system since what will now forever be known as my German Cake Incident.

Exhibit E: They had a fellow playing acoustic guitar and singing outside the tent as we left. The neighborhood kids gathered around him in rapt attention.  No loud screaming jungle beat, disco, boogie, or I can’t hear myself think music.  This guy was great and people could hear him sing and themselves think at the very same time, if they felt like it.

We walked over to say our thanks and good byes to Florence. God bless her, she never changed into her fancy purple wedding attire and looked about ready to drop. And drop she would, as soon as about 200 people left her mother’s front porch and the tent area and everything was cleaned up. We couldn’t wait that long, so parted ways.

 I also saw there a woman I have seen before at various events there who is just about my age but who I think looks much older. She has a 14 year old daughter in a wheelchair who has cerebral palsy.  The woman’s life is about caring for this child, who is very sweet and happy every time I see her. Today the mother was telling me about her child needing shoes.  I have given her a small bit of money before, but there is no way I could do any such thing with every eye within eyeshot watching me talk to her.

Tom reminds me I have to think with my head and not my heart all the time, or I will be overwhelmed and probably poor(er) as well.  He has a point; the pit is bottomless. Later, I thought about it some more and realized that the various pits I was trying to fill at home were seemingly bottomless too, and it never meant I stopped trying to fill them. The millionaire decides carefully what to do with her money in terms of charity, just as someone like me does. I may have fewer Pula, but they are still mine to give and will be my choices to live with.

 If the Roman Catholic Church (and others) want to see a 10% tithing, and I now can list my religion as simply “God” (see, another recruit in Botswana already!) and God doesn’t have a bank account for me to deposit to, then with my Pula 1850 a month salary I have P185 to donate as I see fit, right?

Great plan. Tomorrow I am taking two of my Girls shopping for Christmas.  They really helped me with a project for World AIDS Day, and since I know how poor their families are, I decided to “thank” them, with a trip to Lobatse and something special for Christmas.  The third girl can’t go, so we will have to shop for her…..This is going to take me through more than  a few months’ worth of tithing to be sure, but it is worth it.

I went to speak to both of their parents about the trip to be sure it was okay and to find out what they felt the girls needed so we stayed focused.  At the first girl’s house I ended up speaking to someone who I just thought was way too young to be my friends mother. Turns out, I was right. She was the older sister. The mother sat silently under the tree while we were talking.  At least I had greeted her first and was including her in the overall conversation, but she doesn’t speak English so the daughter did the talking. I felt like a doofus afterwards.

The other girl’s father seemed a bit bewildered by the whole concept and mostly wanted me to explain why we were going to Lobatse and not Ramotswa. I should have told him that Lobatse was easier to get to, but instead I said I liked Lobatse and did’t like Ramotswa.  My Setswana doesn’t allow for nuances.  Of course it turns out he is from Ramotswa, so score one for me.  He was surprised I had no car and then took my phone number down. Hope he doesn’t used that ever. I never saw the mother.

Re-entry

I will be the first to admit that cutting paper snowflakes probably isn’t the best use of my time right now, but I am only doing it because my American kindergarten experience failed me by not teaching me how to make origami stars instead.  That and because I am too sick to do much else today.

While in Germany I saw lots of pretty origami or otherwise folded stars, and brought back a nice “easy” pattern to make one of my own, along with some nice winter blue and ice white paper perfect for such exercises.  Never mind that it makes no frigging sense to make snowflakes or winter colored stars for Christmas here or that the simple pattern wasn’t that simple.  My German mother gave me a few tiny ones that when I am feeling better I may just dissect in order to figure them out. But today, the whole exercise has exhausted me, as has the thought that Christmas time can be spent sweating instead of freezing.

Not sure when it happened, but am sure only that I am not surprised it happened. Somewhere along my wonderful trip to Germany my body decided that it never wanted to see or smell food again.  Imagine the fun I had in the plane each time a meal was served and I couldn’t just step outside for a breath of fresh air.  No one but myself to blame, but still not fun.  I immediately claimed the two adjoining seats in my four seated row and tried my best to sleep through the whole thing – the woman in the fourth seat seemed to be able to sleep sitting up okay and I would hopefully never see her again, so I figured “it’s about me this time” and went for it.  I was also delighted the flight was only 10 hours instead of the 12 I had expected.

This fact was more than made up for on the ground in Jo’burg, where I had to sit around for 4 hours before my connection to Gabs finally left, and nobody wanted me to take three seats to myself there, so it was pretty rotten. 

In Gabs, I was presently surprised at the baggage claim by my former counterpart Victor, who was supposed to be returning from studies in Canada the next day but had arrived the day before. The airlines had lost one of his bags, so he was back there to pick it up. That was a very pleasant welcome back to Botswana. I am trying to get him to the office next week to help me clean up some of this grant ….we shall see if he bites.

 I finally started to feel better - like an earlier form of human -  but not completely human around 1 when my ride arrived to pick me up. We drove to Game City where I bought myself a vacuum cleaner. Merry Christmas to Me!  As he drove me along A1 towards Otse, we slowed for a police checkpoint.  I was talking to him about Botswana being such a “small town” and comparing it to my trip to Germany, when he slowed the car even though he was being waved through so he could say “hi” to all the various people working at the checkpoint.  Guess he knew them. I understood one word in it all “lekgoa” (white person) to figure I needed to ask what they were saying.  He said, they saw him with me and were joking that he now had himself a white woman. Yeah, great.  It got worse once we passed his regular turnoff and headed to Otse. Right about that time, a car full of women flew by us honking. Then he flew by them honking.

So now he was clearly driving a white woman somewhere beyond his normal “territory” and would be hearing about it.  I hope he only says the truth, that I paid the owner of the taxi P200 to pick me up and the airport and he was driving instead because something had come up for the owner at the last minute.  This is how one gets a bad reputation (or a good one, depending on which gender you happen to be).

He drops me off without further incident and as I close and lock the gate, a (male) neighbor walks by and greets me, asking me how I like Botswana. Still like it, I guess, but having a bit of a culture shock moment, is what I am thinking….but I tell him “it’s just fine, Botswana.”  He mentions he saw the fellow I had come and clean the yard earlier in the week and that he was glad because of snakes. 

I turned and looked at the yard and noticed that all the weeds from the immediate dirt driveway area were gone. Cool.  My house sitter had done me this additional favor, I guess, although in theory, since it is his mother’s house and he is supposed to look after it anyway, it was a relatively small favor.  Of course the fact that the fellow walking by noticed this, but didn’t notice that the guy doing the cleaning was the same fellow who is the son of the owner of the house means that this fellow has started to speculate about who the guy in my yard was. And since the guy in my yard stayed at my house for 10 days, he can further speculate.

Perhaps since I am white and older they will assume only that I am rich and have hired gardening help, not that I have hired a companion. Realistically, if I WERE to hire a companion (but why the hell would I do that when I have my cats??) I would be sure to be here when he was, and not half way around the world.

Speaking of whom, my hired help just arrived with a friend of his on the way to work to pick up the gift I brought him back from Germany – a black polo shirt with the word Deutschland and its flag on it.  He was happy.  He says he rarely saw Sisi during his stay, and that Pudi would scratch on his bedroom door at night to be let in.  He was happy to see I had bought a vacuum cleaner and I promised him as soon as I felt up to the challenge I would start de-furring the house. He also asked if I was going to have a Christmas tree….hmmm….he may have a point because probably the only way it will start FEELING like Christmas is if I start decorating the place….deck the halls and all.  And it looks like the mangos will be ripe for Christmas, so what the heck do I have to complain about???

But right now I am just too tired and blechy feeling to do much. Maybe I will cut out a few more snowflakes, just because it doesn’t take much energy...and in a strange way it does make me feel cooler.

Bikes, Massages and Rotarians

Never in my life has it taken that long to get some place and then less than half the time to get back afterwards.  Said another way, everything she said about what it would look like on my way there and where I should turn or not turn made perfect sense only after I had gotten there and done it all wrong. I don’t want to turn this into some great philosophical lesson or anything, so I will just leave it at that.

Except to say that thusly, my ten minute bike ride to find the fellow who was going to give me a 20 minute therapeutic massage here in Wiesbaden turned into something more like a 45 minute bike riding nightmare followed by 15 minutes of bliss.  Both of these were strictly from my perspective, of course. For the therapist, it was 15 minutes or so of comments such as “Frau Kraft, relax, Frau Kraft, you should see a therapist, Frau Kraft, this is a very hard knot.” Followed by his giving up his lunch break the next day to see me for two 20 minute sessions back to back.  Nice guy. I am sure he thought he could get that sucker of a knot if he just had more time.  And my neck too, jeez louise, or however one says THAT in German.

The bike ride was nice enough on the way back and quite a surprise really to be able to go so much faster than normal, and all under my own control. I had forgotten that there was something between walking under my own control and all those things that aren’t, but which move much faster: trains, planes and automobiles/buses. I like this nice middle ground of movement called a bicycle. Sure, it was cold, and partially wet, the rain having come in the morning, but to actually ride a bicycle where there are bike lanes and no thorns or glass on the street is something pretty cool. It will also be much shorter tomorrow, when I know where I am going. It is too bad I have decided I need to buy myself a vacuum cleaner or I would buy a bicycle back in Botsland. Can’t afford both, but am tired of the dirt and cat hair, so such is life.

I really have to stop carrying the world on my neck and shoulders though, and as soon as I carry half of it in my luggage back to Botswana I plan to stop doing just that, starting with NOT carrying my notebook every day to work. And maybe even some days I won’t even carry myself to work. So there.

After the massage, I went back home and changed clothes so I could head to Wiesbaden proper for a Rotary meeting.  The club I had made contact with here, Wiesbaden Rheingau, was meeting at   1 p.m. and they had invited me to attend their meeting. I had met many of them Sunday afternoon at a small church near where I am staying at Hartmut’s in the part of Wiesbaden on the water (let’s just forget to mention which river anymore). There, they had a nice holiday performance by a boys’ choir, with readings about the holiday season, followed by cake and coffee.

After the performance, I learned just how much cake and coffee I needed to eat in order to feel totally ill and go to bed with my eyes wide open. I won’t tell you, because everyone should find that out for themselves, but let’s just say it helped me to take “eating too much cake in Germany” off my list of things I still had to do. It also led to a dream where I drove a car in the snow without a steering wheel along Highway 101 near Garberville, where everyone spoke something between German and English and were all quite happy and without worries once the car stopped and they could eat cake.  Like I said, I ate a lot of cake.

Monday though, after my massage and my extenuated bike ride, I was feeling a bit better and so could then eat lunch with my Rotarian brethren.  I was the only woman in the room. There are four clubs in Wiesbaden and two have more women. I think this club might have one or two (or not) but they weren’t in attendance. They meet at probably the best hotel in Wiesbaden with the best restaurant in Wiesbaden no doubt as well. We were elegantly served roasted duck, red cabbage and a potato dumpling, followed by a nice little dessert.  I ordered a small glass of beer and some water. He brought me the glass of beer with some water in it. He must have thought there was something wrong with me, just like I thought there was something wrong with him when he explained what he had done.  Every time I think I can speak German, I find out otherwise. He took it away saying it would not taste that good and brought me a beer and a bottle of water and we were both relieved. I am pretty sure I asked for them separately the first time, but then obviously not.

The club enjoyed hearing briefly about how I came to be in Botswana from California and how I came to speak German, which THEY all thought I spoke exceptionally well.  A couple of them figured I must have a German husband to speak so well, to which I replied, “not yet.” They joked about flipping a coin, but that never really went anywhere.  They were all very welcoming and kind and we exchanged flags – I gave them one from Arcata Sunrise and they gave me one from their club – and we took a photo.  When I had earlier emailed the president that I had a flag to give them, I accidentally said pfanne (which is a frying pan, I believe) instead of Pfahne (which I THINK is a flag). He thought it was cute. What can I say?

They were a bit surprised that Arcata met so early in the morning – after all what kind of proper German club could ever imagine meeting at a time when one couldn’t really order a beer with one’s meal?  They already know Americans do things a bit differently, so I wasn’t kicked out right then and there, especially since I did order a beer.  Overall, I enjoyed myself and the chance to meet Rotarians and learn about their projects.  They are a bit more formal here they we are at home, so it always took me a second to figure out who they were talking to when they said "Frau Kraft" especially since I knew my mother was nowhere nearby. A good time.

Sweets from the Christmas Market in Frankfurt
Christmas Market in Frankfurt, the old with the tacky.

No really, it IS the Rhine. That's my final offer

In case anyone cares, Wiesbaden and Frankfurt are on the Main River, not Rhine

Thought I should correct that mistake before my family here or the geography police catch up with me.

We went to the Frankfurt Christmas Market today. Bigger and more expensive than the one in Goettingen, but otherwise the same, except also much more crowded. More mulled wine with Amaretto, a bratwurst, and roasted chestnuts. First time I have had chestnuts and I wasn't totally impressed, but maybe if they had put chocolate on them? I commandeered (okay, I took as keepsakes, ok, I stole, but they halfway expect you to or why would they make them so fancy?) the four mulled wine mugs with the Frankfurter Weihnacht's Markt stamp on them that we used and threw them in my nifty bag. Which now, along with my gloves, smells like, uh, old wine and amaretto. Pleasant.

Then we were off to the airport to see Martin, one of my German brothers, who was on his way to Korea for business. He had before him a nice little 12 hour flight with at least that many time zones, and just for 3 days. Poor fellow.  But at least the Frankfurt airport is relatively civilized: people without tickets can come in and sit in the restaurants with travellers and aren't kept at bay by horrendous security checkpoints and naked footed people right at the entrance.  Here, they do the security searches right at the gate. Sure, a person could come into the airport and do something disruptive at the airport Starbucks, but still not get to a plane and I guess they figure that is the main thing. 

I think it is much better for airport business to allow people without tickets to come in and buy expensive things while waiting for friends and family to come and go, but we Americans have just grown that paranoid. We could probalby improve our economy if we changed this. In fact, I am pretty sure our economy went south right after they moved the security checkpoints to the front doors, but I need a fact checker. I haven't taken a shoe off at an airport since San Francisco and haven't missed that crazy scramble that occurs when people are looking for their stuff in stocking feet, one bit. Is it just me, or are my sentences starting to seem more like they are in German written and then into English translated? Whatever.

Tomorrow afternoon I have been invited to attend a gathering at a church right near here by the four Wiesbaden Rotary Clubs who are having a get-together for the holiday season. Nice German church with a nice boys choir and then afterwards, finally, nice kaffee and kuchen!! I have been eating the special Christmas Stollen the entire time I have been here, a sweet bread and perfect for the season, but I want now to have my cake and eat it too please.  If it goes well, I will probably attend one of the club meetings on Monday at a fancy hotel in the heart of Wiesbaden, where they also have a spa. I promised myself I would splurge on a nice massage while here, and if Hartmut and Valeria's contact doesn't call here first thing Monday morning, I am going for the glitzy hotel massage right the meeting after.

Caution, I say to the wind throw.

The Sound of Silence and How Much That Costs in Euro

I am being driven to distraction by the silence I have finally been granted. I hadn’t realized how important peace and quiet had become to me until I had bucket loads of it over the last eight months and then had it temporarily taken away.  I have always liked my quiet time, to be sure, but have never minded having people around. Unless they are full of nothing worth talking about but which is talked about anyway. It is peaceful now and my wayward and mostly not-worth-talking-about-thoughts are coming home to roost. I guess the only difference is that no one is forcing you to read this.

I went for a walk today, to see the neighborhood and walk down to near the body of water that is known here as the Rhein River. It is a cold, but not frigid day, around 8 Grad Celsius or so, but the sun came out and it was perfectly pleasant as long as you kept moving.  I walked by the old buildings, along cobblestoned streets and sidewalks and found what used to be a semi-old (by our standards old, by European standards semi-old) castle, and then maybe it was later a champagne factory (or so the words over the huge doorway would have one believe) but now appears to be an office building. I only surmise this because nobody in it looked particularly regal or the least bit drunk. I have to assume they were simply bureaucrats of some sort, waiting for the end of their Friday so the weekend could start. They would go home and perhaps act as regal and as drunk as they can get away with, without passer’s by gawking into their windows.

Along the small harbor, which is not much more than a nice spot where part of the river diverts off the main Rhein and the larger boats can’t and won’t come, I walked past the various yachts and smaller boats still in the water. In the summer, this stretch is very busy, with joggers, people out for a German stroll, cyclists, screaming children looking for an ice cream cone, and people who know what to do with these boats. Now, it is forlorn and quiet with only the most hardy joggers and wanderers out for a go of it.  

I came along a mobile used bookstore: really just a closet-sized metal bookshelf with doors to lock it at night, and browsed for something interesting.  There was no one there – just a metal box where one could put donations for people in Africa to help them get glasses and have their eye problems treated. Somewhere in Burkina Faso. I found a Nicholas Sparks book in German, making sure it wasn’t the one I just finished reading in English, along with a couple other small books, and put 5 Euro in the can.

Efforts have been made throughout the neighborhood here on the water at various types of Christmas decorations, and I enjoyed walking along peeking into people’s windows to see what decorative themes they had decided on this year. Most individual decorative efforts are still inside one’s house, including directly on their large windowsills, and are meant to be looked at, so I wasn’t being perverse or anything. Little by little the decorations are venturing onto the outsides of the homes in a more aggressive, perhaps American inspired manner. Subtle outdoor holiday decorations probably don’t really exist anywhere, I suppose. Once you put a fake Santa or snowman on your wall or roof, you have basically given up on subtly. I liked the Santa hanging a bit crookedly from the sign for one of the local pubs. He seemed in the right frame of mind, or at least pose, for hanging out around a pub. I hope someone turns him upside down before I leave so I can get a photo. That is the proper yuletide cheer I traveled here to see, after all.

I am doing my best to spend my last Euro so I have to get some more. I have no idea what I am spending, although I think 1 Euro = roughly $1.40. Since I am thinking in Pula, where 1 Pula equals about 15 cents or so, so this is truly a dangerous country to be shopping in because anything that only costs 1 of something sounds cheap, even though it isn’t if that something is a Euro. My brother will be able to fill me in later when he sees the Visa bill, but maybe I won’t want to know. 

I can’t buy much more though, because the one bag I brought to fill with such things is about full. Most of what I want to bring back to Botswana is food. We will see what they say about this at the airport. I suppose if they want a bunch of money for it all I will just leave it there in the airport or sit down and eat it all in front of them. Even if I get full and say I want to save the extra and bring it to the starving children in Africa, I don’t think they will be convinced.

Reporting Live from Germany

Arrived in Frankfurt after an uneventful flight from Jo’burg. I like uneventful flights.  The flight wasn’t full, so I shared a row of 4 seats with a fellow from Italy who lives in Boston and Cape Cod. He works for a group called Woodhole that is a think tank regarding climate change. He was coming back from a conference in Durban, South Africa, on his way home to Boston then flying to Dubai a few days later. That particular flight plan didn’t make a lot of sense to me, but maybe he needed more clean socks or something. Interesting fellow, very dedicated, but what a travel schedule. And always in Economy. He is moving to San Francisco area in February to work for one year at Stanford so we exchanged emails in case he wants some names and contacts in the Bay Area. Although I think with his work schedule he may never even see the Bay Area.  Maybe I can turn him over to my mother and her friends and they can set him straight.

My first impression of Germany: cold, with no bugs. Okay, I later did see a measly sized spider and on my visit to my German parent’s a random flying thing was actually in the house. It is winter here.  No wall spiders and no mosquitos so far, thank you very much. 

My first day was spent first with my brother Hartmut’s wife, Valeria, and then alone with a nice down comforter in a bed for a three hour nap.  When I awoke the kids were home from school – a 4 year old and a 6 year old – both boys, and the noise began.  For the first hour or so they pretty much ignored me. Then suddenly at some point they were crawling all over me, perhaps finally recognizing me from seeing me last November in Sacramento or because they had watched me carefully during the time I sat there and realized I wasn’t going away nor was I doing to destroy them or impede their frantic, crazy world.

A friend of theirs from Brazil who now lives in Miami showed up – he was there for a conference for the week but couldn’t get a hotel room for this one night – so he was going to bunk in with the kids. Still later another friend from Brazil arrived, also there for the same conference, but he had a hotel room and would be leaving later.  We all sat around, them speaking Portuguese to one another, and German to me. I pulled out the bottle of Amarula I brought from South Africa  - a nice dessert drink like Baileys but without the whiskey flavor.  We listened to some jazz, or tried to with all the conversations going including one to Brazil via Skype and the shrieks of the kids from time to time. Hartmut and I did a small bit of catching up, but he was exhausted.  They had just gotten back the day before from Brazil where they had taken a vacation, and he had had to go directly back to work the next day, so he was pretty shot.

We decided that I would head to see my German parents by train the next day, so that I had the weekend free to be with them in Wiesbaden. Depending on the weather Saturday, we will go to the Christmas Market in Frankfurt, the biggest in the country apparently. I think it supposed to snow by then, and with young kids everything you do is done with painstaking deliberation. But if they can’t go, I will since freezing in snow while drinking mulled wine (with a shot of amaretto it is surprisingly good) is on my list of things to do while here.

The train ride to Goettingen, where my parents live in an “old folk’s home” took about 2 hours. I decided to walk a bit in the old town section of the city before heading to their house, since I arrived around noon and they were going to be at lunch and then taking their after lunch naps. I wandered the streets, soaking in the “German-ness” of it all. It was cold but not raining so I figured now was the time to walk about. I ended up shopping primarily for Christmas tree ornaments to take back to Botswana as small gifts I could give my co-workers, and clothing for my youngest Batswana niece and now two nephews, as one of my sisters had a baby a week or two ago.  I really ought to make myself a list of who I am buying stuff for so I don’t go nuts in the wrong direction and end up with things only I want. Well, that wouldn’t be so bad either except everything here is expensive.

I was leaving just as the dancing was getting started. This was one of the early dancers, with her butt stuck out and the thumbs up. I am sorry i cut her butt off, but you get the idea.

So cute in such a preppy, dorky way.

The full body shot.

This is what they look like with the rest of their bodies, not just the hands.

We were playing a game with a balloon when one of the smaller kids came over and started touching my very white skin and my bulging blue veins on my hand. this got us all looking at our hands and a spontaneous photo.

As much as I like the shots where I can pick up alot of other people in the background, I really like the close-ups the best.

This girl was simply the sweetest.

The only young fellow in the party, he came to show off his suit and moves.

these girls were part of the wedding and were pretty tired by all their official duties.

I like focusing in on one non-frantic subject who is watching me, and then hoping to catch what is going on around him or her as well.

sometimes it was hard to get a picture off, with them crowding so closely, but i like the effect.